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Caught up in the Rapture

Not a shocking revelation considering I have woke up breathing one way or another every Monday morning for over 23 years. Maybe it’s just different on this Monday because, as one 89-year-old decrepit man pointed out on his radio show, the world would no longer cease to exist by 6 pm this past Saturday.

Now, I’m not one to be close-minded and cynical towards different points of view. Actually, I embrace different patterns of thought altogether and each person’s right to believe what they want and live life the only way they know. But in the process of human beings living by different means, a schism occurs between the public where a certain line is drawn and the majority tend to be on the correct side of that imaginary breaking point. The public has been together on certain moments in history, such as Princess Diana, the obliteration of Bin Laden and Arnold Schwarzenegger acting like Ron Jeremy with his housekeepers.

But even as I attempt to stay level-headed in what seems to be a society that continuously gets more idiotic by the minute, it’s getting harder and harder to bear. I just can’t compute how people believe almost anything they hear, and I’m not talking about those who used the supposed rapture as comedy fodder; I’m talking about the zealots sporting signs of world-ending consequences and those who quit their jobs and wasted their pensions before they were struck by the hand of their god. And even thought I’m not really a practicing Catholic anymore, I’m still a Catholic and understand that nobody (a.k.a. no human beings) will know when the “coming of Christ” will ensue. It could be tomorrow, maybe it will be in 2041, maybe it will be another four billion years.

It’s almost pompous to estimate when the world will end. I mean, don’t people have anything better to do? I’m working late nights, answering phones from high school sports coaches who are often ill-prepared to even give the information they are supposed to provide. I’m preparing myself for a future in which I will have a life to enjoy and people to share it with (a family). Meanwhile, I see Mr. Ignoramous on CNN marching the street with a home-made wooden sign hanging over his disproportionate body that says the end of the world is soon to be upon us. It’s more scare tactics for a nation which has reached new levels of paranoia since 9-11.

From the Westboro Church to other religious zealots (and, in some cases, heathens), faith and patience are being put on the afterburners in favor of some of grandiose plan for eternal salvation. (Yes, because picketing the funerals of fallen soldiers will lead you straight down the path of righteousness, straight past St. Peter and into the pearly gates.) When did these people start getting entwined in false hope like it’s their job? Did they eat the paint chips in their church rectories? And the worst part is that it wasn’t just egomaniacal Christians; it was people from all walks of life. It makes me wonder whether these people wanted the world to end, just like the elderly soul who abused his radio power to get the “message” out in the first place.

Me? I didn’t give it one moment of thought. There was a point between the wedding I attended on Friday and the tiny luncheon in which I made an appearance on Saturday afternoon that I had forgot all about this lunacy. If the world is going to end while I’m alive, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be weighed down by more background noise than I already allow myself to become distracted with, and you know why? Because life is hard enough as it is to get through every single day and go to sleep wondering whether you made the most out of that day. Life is short, it’s unpredictable, it’s sinister, it’s beautiful. The human experience is a transcendent cornucopia of emotions and it’s hard to contain each feeling all at once.

For me, right now, I am content. I am content that I am able to live another day and be able to hear more asinine conspiracy theories and see human beings flailing towards the inevitable — at least in their own heads. I have better things to worry about.